In October of last year Mike and I began shopping around for used RVs and sometime around Halloween weekend we found one. She's a 37 ft. long 1996 Raven XL and belonged to the Hendersons (no sign of Harry!), a sweet older couple in Falcon, CO who were only the second owners and took such good care of her while they had her. She has less than 50,000 miles and we got her for $12,500, a total steal. We dubbed her the Serenica Landship, found a storage facility to store her for the winter, bought a gigantic winter cover, and sealed her up eager for fall and winter to pass quickly.
Fortunately, they did and this last weekend we devoted most of the weekend to uncovering her, cleaning her out (the Hendersons left a bunch of stuff inside we were welcome to but most of it was trashed), taking measurements, making lists, and discussing everything we want to do with her.

I also got around to taking interior photos, though I realize now I didn't get any great shots of the console/cockpit area or the closet for the washer/dryer. I'll take those soon and throw them up here. Click on any of these to see them much larger. Also worth noting, we'd already pulled some of the "decorative" border wallpaper down so you'll see some weird spaces with tears where that was around the bathroom area.

Featured Posts

I met Melissa, this red-lipped, beautifully inked, raven-haired woman less than 6 months ago. One day, nearly two months ago she confessed her love to me for Banksy’s balloon girl. She said she was dying to recreate it in a photograph for someone special to her, but wanted a snowy-filled backdrop. She wanted that vibrant red heart balloon to pop off a clean white setting.

My husband and I recently participated in an Atlas Obscura event to get a peek inside the Wonder View Tower in Genoa, Colorado. I'd actually never heard of this place before a friend sent me a link for the AO tour event only days prior to the meet-up. Needless to say, I was hooked and immediately bought tickets.

"Looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver’s shuttle, or shoemaker’s last, but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world."

“Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Familes are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.” ―Diane Setterfield

The trip was of course, wonderful, until the last 30 minutes of the drive home when Serenica's engine began stalling on us whenever we'd drop beneath a certain speed (hoping it's a minor fix!). Fortunately, after stalling out on several occasions and getting it restarted again, she died right inside our RV storage lot gate and wouldn't turn over.

I probably don't need to say here that I absolutely could not have predicted that it would have been 14 more months before we were ready to post the After shots, but I'm going to say it anyway: I had no idea how long this beast would actually take us to complete.

And then a woman appeared on the barren land, with seeds in her teeth, and each limb a root in search of earth to plant themselves. And then a woman appeared on the barren land, and not from the rib of any man, and not for his pleasure or to come to his aid, for without woman, there is no life, and there is no man.